James Oliphant:
President Obama couldn’t say it—he denied it repeatedly in fact—but Edward Snowden was very much the reason he felt compelled to stand before the national press on a sun-baked Friday August afternoon and attempt to explain why his administration would pursue reforms of its counterterrorism programs even though—and this is the tricky part—he wouldn’t concede that those programs are flawed in any way.
That brings us back to Snowden, the whistleblower/patriot/traitor squirreled away somewhere in Russia after revealing key operational details of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs. The drip-drip of disclosures was slowly eroding the public’s faith in the system, the president said Friday, and he needed to take steps to reassure the world that it wasn’t being abused. He worried aloud that Americans were increasingly viewing the government as an Orwellian “Big Brother.”
“It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs,” Obama said before reporters in the White House East Room. “The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.”
For the president, the day marked an attempt to wrest some control of a situation that increasingly threatens to disrupt the national security calculus. Late last month, an attempt by liberals and libertarian Republicans in the House to limit the NSA’s authority fell inches short. To that end, the president announced that he would work with Congress to rewrite a key section of the Patriot Act, push for more opposing views before the shadowy Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, move to declassify more national security documents, and appoint an outside panel to examine whether the surveillance programs strike the proper balance between security and civil liberties.
Obama, as well as senior administration officials, did their best to paint the new initiatives as a product of a review process the president commenced when he first assumed office, with Obama repeatedly noting Friday that he had criticized some NSA programs as a senator. But just about no one was buying that. And the president ultimately admitted that Snowden’s actions had forced the administration’s hand.
“The leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board,” Obama said, while adding, “I actually think we would have gotten to the same place—and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security.”
Still, Obama wasn’t ready to revise his assessment of Snowden, who, he reminded the press, has been charged with multiple felonies. “I don’t think he was a patriot,” Obama said.
Even as the president was outlining his plans, he was just as quick to insist that the NSA’s wide latitude to collect data isn’t being abused. “America is not interested in spying on ordinary people,” Obama said. The surveillance programs, he said, were valuable and “should be preserved.” The flaw, if there was one, he said, lay in his assumption that the public would trust that the “checks and balances” in place between the administration, Congress, and the courts was enough to secure personal freedom. Instead, he said, after Snowden’s revelations, “I think people have questions about this program.”
The independent commission, which will be comprised of experts from the intelligence, civil liberties, privacy and tech sectors and which will release a preliminary report in 60 days, will be tasked with giving the public a more complete picture of NSA operations. “Let’s put the whole elephant out there so people know exactly what they’re looking at,” Obama said.
The power of this Federal government needs to be seriously reigned in. It’s clear that the establishment progressives Republicans who have seized control of the GOP are little different than their far-left counterparts. They are going to do what they and their fellow “elite” want to do, with the near unanimous consensus of “to hell with what The People want”.
Nobody seems to worry that private industry is routinely performing keyword monitoring of their e-mail traffic, recording their full internet search histories, keeping track of every webpage they visit, and collating the voluminous data they collect into increasingly detailed personal profiles attributable to individual users. Not only do they collect your personal data, they also trade it and sell it. None of which seems to set off alarm bells concerning anyone’s personal privacy.
Yet a largely anonymous data mining program—which is probably one of our most effective tools against terrorism, which hasn’t been demonstrated to have adversely affected any law-abiding American, and which is apparently being conducted in accordance with oversight rules contrived by Congress—is automatically perceived as a terrible threat.
This program will likely be a hell of a lot less useful as a national security tool once the enemies we might have gathered information on unawares learn all of the significant details by watching the evening news.
File that one in the drawer labeled Understatements.
If you disagree, you might want to visit one of the Edward Snowden benefit pages that have recently popped up. You can show your appreciation for his courage in the face of the tyrannical American government by sending him a few bucks, which will make his life more comfortable in freedom-loving Russia.
Edward Snowden is nothing more than the most recent notable U.S. defector to Russia. His actions are no more noble than Christopher Boyce or the Rosenbergs. He should be treated the same way when he eventually returns to the custody of U.S. legal authorities.
When you think Snowden think Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, etc. Patriots indeed but if the British “establishment” had gotten ahold of these, they would have hanged them.
But realistically, the unconstitutional spying on American citizens is not to safeguard against terrorism; its for spying on specific individual for business spying and advantage against competition. Know the details of what religious and civic leaders are doing and you’ll be able to control the debate; spy on political candidates, and usurp their lead.
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I say shut the Utah trash down and respect the Costitution. Unless this happens, Obama and others are playing deadly outlaw patently criminal games. The cannot win. The will not win.
@AdrianS, #4:
There is absolutely no evidence for that.
There’s less than none for the assertion that Snowden is a patriot.
The guy stole highly classified national security information, publicly revealed enough of it to compromise the program to genuine, they-really-want-to-kill-us-and-are-looking-for-opportunities-to-do-so enemies of the United States, and fled with the rest to Russia.
@Greg:
You would be wrong. There are a good many people who are also against that type of collection as well. There are certain measures that users can take to lower their vulnerability and what information they put out there. The main difference is that the users are the ones who provide the information, and that business mostly uses it for advertizing and demographic purposes. Internet providers and phone companies also dump the collected data after a relatively short period of time, which is why the NSA has been building massive data storage facilities, so that they can force the businesses into giving them everything, including the recorded information before the businesses destroy it. Industry experts have noted that if the government were only collecting metadata, they wouldn’t need the enormous storage capacities of these huge data storage centers.
@Greg:
Wrong!
Plus, you can stop Google and just about any other website from collecting information on you if you want to. For Google:
There are protections under the FTC to stop data gathering if you opt out. Although there is a similar protection in place under the 4th amendment to stop the government from doing this, both parties seem to think that amendment is no longer relevant.
@Aqua, unfortunately cleaning your history will not remove the personal information from Google’s files. As an SEO company points out, cleaning the history is only a “pause” on the data collection. The data collection is instantaneous once you visit sites and that info is stored, if not immediately consolidated with all their other data they’ve collected on your related metadata. But cleaning out cookies and history is a good habit to get into. I’ve done it for years. It does cut down on the spam input, if nothing else.
Google has already been called on the legal carpet for it’s privacy policies. However it doesn’t appear they are trending away from data collection in any way, as it’s a lucrative product to sell in marketing. In fact they’ve made it that all their varied product lines can easily exchange that metadata for more efficient compilation.
I’ve not used Google for years, but I can’t function without Google Earth. However you’ll notice that most websites have a Google Analytic tool running on their websites. So in the end, avoiding Google is rather like trying to avoid daily weather. They are everywhere.
@MataHarley:
I must be doing something wrong. I can open the Dashboard and Google knows just about squat about me. I like Google, it is by far the best search engine out there, at least for general purpose searches. I know they have a major political bias, but I have other avenues for those types of searches.
And they will continue to get called on the carpet. So will Facebook and Microsoft. And Facebook is way more dangerous than Google and Microsoft combined. You can fool all of these websites with multiple accounts, multiple email addresses, and other tricks.
You can’t do that with the government.